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Pier of El Hornillo

Águilas, Alto Guadalentín, Murcia

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Pier of El Hornillo

Monument · Águilas, Alto Guadalentín, Murcia

The Hornillo pier, also called the Hornillo bridge, is located 1.5 kilometres from Águilas, in a small bay protected by the Punta del Caballo to the west, the Punta del Cambrón to the east and the Isla del Fraile to the north. It was built on the initiative of the British engineer Gustavo Gillman, with works carried out by the Great Southern of Spain Railway Company, to boost the Águilas-Lorca-Baza railway line by exploiting the iron mines of the sierra de los Filabres, including those of Las Menas, in Serón, and Bacares. It was opened in 1903, though it did not operate at full capacity until 1904, once improvements to the initial project were completed; the ore arrived via the Almendricos-Águilas line, extended that same year to link up with the pier itself. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2009, it is considered the second most important pier of its kind in Spain, and since 2017 it can be visited as a railway museum.

Photo: Danielí97 (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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